Not only have stocks like CSCO GLW MSFT made headlines of late for bullish price action, something which has been amiss for many years, but consider this post up at statista.com, titled: “Facebook’s IPO Investors Should Have Invested in Yahoo!”
This chart illustrates how a $1,000 bet on Facebook’s IPO compares with other investments over the past year.
Back in February 2012, when Facebook announced its plans to go public, the tech world immediately went crazy. The hype was enormous over what should become one of the biggest IPOs of all time. On May 18, Facebook started trading at $38, giving the company an implied valuation of $104 billion. But what was supposed to be a sure shot investment, turned out to be a dud.
On its first trading day, the stock closed just above its IPO price but only thanks to the company’s underwriters, led by Morgan Stanley, who bought heavily to keep the stock above its offering price. The next week, Facebook’s stock began crashing and it did so until it hit rock bottom at a price of $17.73 on September 4. Those who had bought shares at the offering price of $38 had lost 54 percent of their initial investment in less than four months.
I’m floored: never thought I would see a day where AOL out-performs both Google and Apple, much less Facebook.
Crazy times.